1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to a hanger for holding merchandise which may be placed on a display rack and more particularly, to a merchandise hanger which is integrally formed and which has a pricing bar.
2. Description of the Background Art
It is important in selling merchandise to display the items for sale in an attractive and convenient manner. This is especially important for items which have a relatively low price and for which the purchase decision is made on the spot. That is, the item is not one which the customer came to buy, but which appeals to the buyer after seeing it in the store. This is true for inexpensive items which are available in certain supermarkets, food stores, drug stores, variety stores, mass merchants and other similar stores where the customer may be purchasing other items but will be attracted to an item because of its utility and packaging after it is seen on display.
Various kinds of displays are available for this merchandise, including counter displays which are essentially a cut-away box sitting on a counter or shelf, a floor stand, which is a larger box set on a pedestal and various types of vertically arranged racks onto which merchandise is placed with hooks. These arrangements are sometimes called xe2x80x9cpower panelsxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9csidekicksxe2x80x9d and are often used in various kinds of stores to display any number of small lightweight items. This display consists of some type of stand or support and some type of grid work onto which the merchandise may be placed. For example, the panel may stand about four feet tall, and may be to twelve to eighteen inches wide. A series of horizontal rods may extend from side-to-side and are spaced from each other vertically, for example by three quarter of an inch. Other similar type of arrangements are also available which have a pegboard backing.
Various arrangements of hooks and merchandise are available which can be hung on the floor stand device. One type is a hook which has a vertical metal back and a frontwardly protruding chrome wire which extends forward by four to six inches and then angles upwardly. The back plate has hooks at the top portion which extend over one of the horizontal rods and a bottom section which then snaps over the next horizontal rod. When used in a pegboard configuration, the back plate may have pegs which interact with holes in the peg board. This type of well known hook is widely used, but has the disadvantage that a great deal of effort is necessary in order to mount all the hooks and to place the merchandise on the hooks by the store owner. While the merchandise could be preloaded onto the hook, the snapping action of the hook onto the stand makes such an assembly more difficult. Further, because of the number of hooks, even if this is possible, a relatively large amount of time is necessary in order to fill the floor stand.
Another approach to this problem is to provide an entire cardboard sheet with the merchandise pre-mounted on the sheet so that the store owner merely places the entire assembly onto the floor stand. This reduces the amount of work for the store owner but is relatively expensive, especially when the merchandise items are inexpensive items. For example, providing a cardboard sheet with hooks may cost on the order of $10-$15 for one stand. If the items for sale are inexpensive items which cost only a $0.50 per piece and the entire stand only holds fifty items, the cost of the cardboard and hook arrangement is a large percentage of the sales price of the items.
The prior art includes any number of other racks for holding merchandise and other items utilizing a vertical plate and extending hooks or pegs onto which the items are placed. Examples of this are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,834,248, 4,372,450, 3,411,633, 1,998,243, 565,525, and 177,936, and Design Patent Nos. 355,841, 291,154, 291,031, 378,252 and 43,289. However, this prior art does not solve the problems of easy handling of merchandise to be stored on a display rack.
Accordingly, one object of the present invention is to provide a merchandise hook which is easily mounted on a vertical stand.
Another object of this invention is to provide a merchandise hook which is inexpensive to make.
Another further object of this invention is to provide a merchandise hook which is inexpensive to make and easy to insert onto a stand.
A still further object of this invention is to provide a merchandise hook which may be filled for easy installation on a rack.
A still further object of this invention is to provide a merchandise hook which is integrally formed and which covers substantially all of the width of a stand.
Briefly, these and other objects of the invention are achieved by providing a hook arrangement which has a vertical back plate extending across substantially the entire width of the rack with hooks extending upwardly from the back plate to hang the unit on the rack and a series of forwardly extending merchandise holders onto which the merchandise may be pre-loaded.